Abstract
Penchansky, David,
Understanding Wisdom Literature: Conflict and Dissonance in the Hebrew Text
, Grand Rapids, Michigan; Cambridge, UK: Eerdmans, 2012; 144 pp.: 9780802867063, £12.99/$20.00 (pbk)
The method Penchansky takes to the interpretation of the wisdom literature in his short introduction is reflected in the subtitle. He sees ‘conflict and dissonance’ as the key to their meaning, and thus focuses on contradictions he finds in the texts, the wisdom tradition, and between wisdom and the rest of Israelite religion. Proverbs involves a conflict between the ‘Fear God’ group, which advises piously accepting the unknowable ways of God, and the ‘Get Wisdom’ group, confident that they have figured out how God’s world works. The prominent figure of Woman Wisdom cannot be made to fit comfortably with these two voices into a unified interpretation. Job is marked by numerous voices at odds with one another. Penchansky prefers the voice of the complaining Job, who, he argues, is not reconciled to God even in the epilogue, his silence communicating an implicit rebuke to the deity’s reckless wager at his expense. Three voices clash in Ecclesiastes – Pessimistic Qoheleth, Fear God Qoheleth and Enjoy Life Qoheleth. Again, Penchansky foregoes reconciliation for personal preference, championing Pessimistic Qoheleth as the one he ‘most want[s] people to listen to’ (p. 63).
These three books of Hebrew Wisdom are depicted as uninterested in Israelite covenants (ch. 5), while Israelite society actively opposed the movement they represented for the threat they posed to its core beliefs and power structures (ch. 1). This leads to a conflict between Hebrew Wisdom and later Greek Wisdom (Ben Sira and Wisdom of Solomon). Challenged by Hellenistic ideas, these later sages retrenched wisdom by surrendering some of their distinctive principles as they ‘opened the doors and allowed the diverse biblical traditions to enter in and reshape their work’ (p. 111). Ben Sira associated wisdom with Torah and wealth, while Wisdom of Solomon drew in new ideas of immortality. This development, Penchansky argues, could be considered a tragedy. However, the way in which the wisdom movement conquered through contextualization, responding to new challenges through reassessing and refashioning its doctrinal commitments, might also, he claims, be celebrated as a triumph. Unsurprisingly, he is content to leave these two potential narratives in tension, though, reading the book, his preference for the former explanation seems clear. As he says at the end of his discussion of the capitulation to nationalism and divine revelation he sees in Wisdom of Solomon: ‘We end this book in a sad place’ (p. 108).
When encountering these differences, Penchansky rightly warns against the Scylla of minimizing them through forced harmonization, but his focus on ‘conflict and dissonance’ occasionally falls prey to the Charybdis of magnifying them instead. For example, given the numerous intertextual connections between the wisdom literature and the rest of the canon, it is unlikely that the relationship between the sages and the rest of Israelite culture was characterized by apathy and antipathy. He should be credited for creatively shaping the development of wisdom literature into a story (two even!), but by emphasizing conflict and then taking sides, his account reads more like a tale of clashing heroes and villains than the nuanced complexity of history.